As a kid I learned that the world is a dangerous place and the safest place was by myself. After all nobody else really cares for me anyway.
I was the youngest child in a family where I had 5 siblings. When I came along my oldest brother had already left home, and my oldest sister left home by the time I turned 3. I had another brother and sister who were more that 6 years older than I. My oldest sister took care of me from the time I was a baby and I remember the deep feelings of abandonment the first time I went to her bedroom and she was no longer there.
My dad favorite saying was that “Children should be seen and not heard”. In my loneliness I would cry as a kid. My dad would say “Stop your crying or I’ll give you something to cry about”. My mom would say “Just quit feeling sorry for yourself”. This was the most “comfort” I ever received as a kid.
Growing up, I was always too little to be included in anything that my brother or sister did and I can remember just wanting to feel included. I don’t remember any other kids around my age so I mostly just stayed by myself. I do remember my older brother teaching me to read before I started school. We had no kindergarten so I started school in first grade a few weeks before my sixth birthday. I attended school in Grants Pass, Oregon for a few months then my family moved to Portland, Oregon and I had to re-start first grade there in January.
I was one of the smartest kids in school and had a quick wit. I came into a class that had already had a chance to form friendships or cliques, and I felt like an outsider so I continued to be withdrawn. I was different than everybody else and so I never felt like I fit in, or was accepted. I was the only ‘Preacher’s Kid’. I used NO profanity of any kind. We didn’t watch any sports at home. In 1964 during the presidential campaign I happened to mention that my father was voting for Barry Goldwater and I was physically carried off the playground and bullied by the kids of the LBJ supporters. I was also the target of other bullies too.
These incidents caused me to withdraw even more. It was not safe to share my opinion or anything with others. At home I stayed by myself tin the basement. I had my own TV to watch and I taught myself electronics and built a few projects in the basement. There was only one kid in my neighborhood near my age and he was a year older than I and in the next grade ahead of me. His parents took him on vacations, cooked steaks on the grill in his backyard sometimes, and I only wished that I could do things like that. I never had a steak until after I had left home. We never took any family vacations. I don’t even remember my dad ever having more than a day off work!
By the time I became a teenager I had had enough. I didn’t really believe in God at the time. Atheism was what was taught in school. So one day I prayed a desperate prayer. I prayed “God if you are really alive, I NEED to know you. If you don’t exist, I have no place here. I can’t live if all I am is evolved green goo and there is no life except this.” I knew that apart from God there is no meaning to life at all. Within a year of praying that prayer, God answered me.
Even today, decades later, I struggle with feelings of being left out. Actually I am uncomfortable many times when I am included. I crave attention but don’t know what to do when it is given to me. Isolation is so much easier.